About festival
video: voices
The VOICES Performing Arts Festival is an independent platform that represents the voices of displaced artists who have to find new ways to be heard. It explores how an artist's identity can transcend geographical boundaries and whether displaced artists can redefine themselves in a new cultural context and enrich it. This year's program focuses on recent migration waves from countries of the former USSR and introduces the public to new names and scenes that deserve closer attention. VOICES 2024 takes place from November 2 to 29 at various venues throughout Berlin and presents new music, dance, and theater productions that reflect on the challenges posed by cultural and political shifts, as well as the impact and new possibilities opened up by modern technologies. In this way, the perspective of the "other" becomes a universal metaphor — a way of seeing that helps explain the world in which we find ourselves.
VOICES festival 2023
video: voices
ARTISTIC COMMITTEE
MARINA DAVYDOVA
theater critic, playwright
theater critic, playwright
What is a national culture? To what extent is it aligned with the geographical boundaries formally associated with it in people's minds? Can it exist independently of language, detached from the local references that resonate with an audience? Can one even discuss performing arts within the framework of national cultures, or have they long existed within a broader cosmopolitan realm? In light of recent political events, these questions have gained sudden relevance. Perhaps never before in recent history have so many people connected to the arts become instant exiles, refugees, and emigrants, seeking to rediscover themselves beyond their homeland's borders, in various countries and circumstances. The Voices Festival, on one hand, focuses on individuals, rather than group identities. Each voice in this program is all the more precious, the more unique their individual experiences are from one another. On the other hand, it raises the question: can representatives of culture living in diaspora maintain themselves as a unified intellectual entity, as an extraterritorial phenomenon, detached from their roots without losing their distinctiveness? The native language for many directors, choreographers, composers and playwrights of the festival is Russian, but their performances now include different languages. “To Forget” by Ilya Moshchitsky is in Armenian, “Mahamaya Electronic Devices” is in English, and we hear Russian and Belarusian in "All Planes are Flying to Minsk". Having found themselves outside their country, these artists find themselves more open to dialogue with other cultures than ever before. One can say that they not only relive the trauma of losing their homeland, but also discover new horizons. The Voices Festival in turn offers a new perspective on contemporary culture through the lens of this novel existence of artists.
SERGEJ NEWSKI
composer
composer
The main question people asked each other four years ago was whether the world and culture would change permanently, or if everything would return to its previous state. Today, we can confidently say that both have been altered irreversibly, though not in the ways we expected. Instead of a single destabilizing factor — the pandemic, which paused cultural life in developed countries for two season — many new challenges have emerged: wars, waves of refugees, and the breakdown of previously stable state cultural funding systems. Numerous artists have been forced to leave their homelands, many have had to change professions, and some have had to restart their careers from scratch.
Without diminishing the tragic experience of artists in exile, it is important to recognize that the situation of being an outsider, the necessity of finding and redefining oneself in a new context, is gradually becoming a common model of existence for artists. This condition can be seen not only as trauma, but also as an opportunity, allowing artists to rethink their experiences. This vision of migration as a universal experience is perfectly illustrated by “Airs de voyages vers l’intérieur” by 90-year-old French-Slovenian composer Vinko Globokar, featured in the NOMADISM project by the PHØNIX16 ensemble. In this work, Balkan rhythms emerge through avant-garde idioms.
Another factor impacting artists and the arts has been the rapid development of technology. In mid-20th-century science fiction novels, the people of the future were freed from monotonous and exhausting work, spending their free time in creative pursuits. Today, however, we increasingly encounter situations where artificial intelligence takes on tasks once considered the domain of creators, leaving humans with routine and repetitive work. The ALGOS project, led by Greek pianist and AI pioneer Pavlos Antoniadis, explores the impact of AI on contemporary music, examining the interplay between algorithms and spontaneity.
The festival will further explore lesser-known regions of the Eurasian space: in the “Tower of Babel” project by Klangforum Wien, and in the experimental music concert of Central Asian countries by the mosaic ensemble. “All Planes are Flying to Minsk” by the Neue Vocalsolisten ensemble, which has supported Belarusian artists in exile for several years, will offer a unique opportunity to witness a different Belarus and hear from authors whose critical reflections on the present provide hope for a better future.
Without diminishing the tragic experience of artists in exile, it is important to recognize that the situation of being an outsider, the necessity of finding and redefining oneself in a new context, is gradually becoming a common model of existence for artists. This condition can be seen not only as trauma, but also as an opportunity, allowing artists to rethink their experiences. This vision of migration as a universal experience is perfectly illustrated by “Airs de voyages vers l’intérieur” by 90-year-old French-Slovenian composer Vinko Globokar, featured in the NOMADISM project by the PHØNIX16 ensemble. In this work, Balkan rhythms emerge through avant-garde idioms.
Another factor impacting artists and the arts has been the rapid development of technology. In mid-20th-century science fiction novels, the people of the future were freed from monotonous and exhausting work, spending their free time in creative pursuits. Today, however, we increasingly encounter situations where artificial intelligence takes on tasks once considered the domain of creators, leaving humans with routine and repetitive work. The ALGOS project, led by Greek pianist and AI pioneer Pavlos Antoniadis, explores the impact of AI on contemporary music, examining the interplay between algorithms and spontaneity.
The festival will further explore lesser-known regions of the Eurasian space: in the “Tower of Babel” project by Klangforum Wien, and in the experimental music concert of Central Asian countries by the mosaic ensemble. “All Planes are Flying to Minsk” by the Neue Vocalsolisten ensemble, which has supported Belarusian artists in exile for several years, will offer a unique opportunity to witness a different Belarus and hear from authors whose critical reflections on the present provide hope for a better future.